“[Abraham] reasoned that God also had the power to raise from the dead” (Hebrews 11:19)
There are many ways a sophisticated reader of Sacred Scripture might fruitfully read Genesis 22:1-14, commonly known as “the binding of Isaac.” It is a marvelous story of God testing Abraham, challenging him to continue to rely entirely on His command and His promises even after having apparently fulfilled them all. However fancy we might get, however, there must always remain at the forefront God’s own explanation of Abraham’s motivations. Abraham believed God could (and would?) raise Isaac from the dead. It’s a startling claim in the letter to the Hebrews precisely because there is no obvious textual support for it in the Genesis account itself. It stands or falls as an explanation of Genesis entirely (?) on the basis of one’s understanding of the inspiration and authorship of Sacred Scripture.
My children put me in mind of this delightful passage while we were reading and discussing another famous scene in Sacred Scripture: the plagues of Egypt in Exodus 7-12. At the end of our little session I fired up the relevant scenes from the best Old Testament movie ever made: the DreamWorks masterpiece The Prince of Egypt. After the terrifying death of all the firstborn, as grieving Pharaoh lays his dead son on a funeral bier, Moses approaches him from behind. His face is filled with such sadness and compassion for his old friend’s loss that my young son spontaneously asked me, “Is he going to raise him from the dead?”
Now that, readers, is one of the greatest intuitions into the meaning of the story that I have ever seen. It is not merely that the letter to the Hebrews opens the way for us to read it like this. The text of Exodus itself furnishes the materials for this interpretation! Four times Pharaoh finds the burden of the plagues too great to bear and asks Moses to intercede for him to the Lord. Four times Moses does so, and four times God did as Moses asked, bringing an end to the second, fourth, seventh, and eighth plagues (the frogs, the flies, the hail, and the locusts).
Why assume that the tenth plague is irreversible? Why assume that God could not or would not restore Pharaoh and all of Egypt? Is this wonder too great for the Lord of Hosts? What would Job say? Abraham believed and it was credited to him as righteousness. Pharaoh instead hardened his heart. He had not, because he asked not. Had he faith the size even just of a mustard seed…
Teaching Boys Badly 